The present invention relates to testing wireless radio frequency (RF) data signal transmitters, and in particular, to facilitating comparison of RF data signals transmitted by a device under test (DUT) and received by a test system.
Many communication devices use wireless technologies both for connectivity and for communications purposes. Because wireless devices transmit and receive electromagnetic waves, and because two or more wireless devices have the potential of interfering with the operations of one another by virtue of their signal frequencies and power spectral densities, these devices and their wireless technologies subscribe to various wireless-technology standard specifications.
In the designing of such devices, engineers take extraordinary care to ensure that such devices will meet or exceed each included wireless technology's prescribed standard-based specifications. Furthermore, once these devices are being mass produced, they are tested to ensure that manufacturing defects will not cause improper operation, including their adherence to the included wireless technology standard-based specifications.
As part of such manufacturing testing, current wireless device test systems employ a subsystem for analyzing signals received from a device under test (DUT), e.g., a subsystem such as a vector signal analyzer (VSA) for analyzing signals received from the DUT, and a subsystem such as a vector signal generator (VSG) for generating signals to be received by the DUT. The analysis performed by a VSA and the signals generated by a VSG are usually programmable so as to allow each to be used for testing a variety of wireless technology standards with differing frequency ranges, bandwidths, and modulation characteristics.
Today's wireless devices typically include circuitry designed to operate in accordance with several wireless signal technologies, such as WiFi (e.g., 802.11x), Bluetooth, cellular radio access technologies (e.g., LTE), and the like. In addition, to keep test time and costs from increasing as more and more wireless signal technologies are incorporated in such devices, some of today's wireless signal test systems are designed to capture and analyze longer signal sequences that have physical characteristics prescribed by two or more wireless signal technology standards.
In testing longer sequences of multiple technology characteristics, the test programs that control the test system (e.g., by controlling the VSA, VSG and other subsystems) become longer and more complex, and as does the test program debugging process. Often program debugging requires attaching external instruments, such as multi-channel oscilloscopes, to the test system and associated other test instruments in order to examine various control signals and power-versus-time displays so as to understand and solve problems related to the new-program debugging process.